The Great American Parks Triphttps://greatamericanparkstrip.com
47 Parks. 20,000 miles. Sat, 17 Mar 2018 07:53:58 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngThe Great American Parks Triphttps://greatamericanparkstrip.com
Antietam National Battlefieldhttps://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2016/05/30/antietam-national-battlefield/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2016/05/30/antietam-national-battlefield/#respondMon, 30 May 2016 10:57:12 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/?p=385Continue reading →]]>Dorothy here! I visited Antietam National Battlefield this weekend. Since Louisa wasn’t here and since it’s a NB (as opposed to NP, though both are in the NPS) I decided to write about it on my personal blog instead of here.

Keep an eye out here, though, because we WERE in the same space and visited two National Historical Parks and took a little video! So there will be a bonus, non-NP GAP post. But this is not it.

]]>https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2016/05/30/antietam-national-battlefield/feed/0IMG_0157smallerthegreatamericanparkstripLast Episode of “Season 2” of the Great American Parks Trip!https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/10/06/last-episode-of-season-2-of-the-great-american-parks-trip/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/10/06/last-episode-of-season-2-of-the-great-american-parks-trip/#respondMon, 06 Oct 2014 16:15:04 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/?p=382Continue reading →]]>Well friends, it’s been a great journey, 26 parks over two, two-month-long road trips. We celebrated the end of this leg at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. These sand dunes are bigger than you see at the beach and we had a great day there!

So, what’s next? Keep an eye on the site and facebook for more pictures and blog posts from the last adventures- we might even have a blooper reel coming your way.

When will Season 3 start? We don’t know right now! It might be next summer, but it might not! We’ll keep you posted as we find out, and any other parks-related adventures that we stumble into! But above all, thanks for watching/reading!

]]>https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/10/06/last-episode-of-season-2-of-the-great-american-parks-trip/feed/0thegreatamericanparkstripE-mail subscribers- you got a secret preview!https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/10/05/e-mail-subscribers-you-got-a-secret-preview/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/10/05/e-mail-subscribers-you-got-a-secret-preview/#respondSun, 05 Oct 2014 02:06:08 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/?p=380For those of you who follow the website via e-mail, you just got a secret preview of a post that wasn’t supposed to be published till Tuesday! Shh, don’t tell the Facebook followers (;
]]>https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/10/05/e-mail-subscribers-you-got-a-secret-preview/feed/0thegreatamericanparkstripNational Monument Monday!https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/29/national-monument-monday/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/29/national-monument-monday/#respondMon, 29 Sep 2014 17:24:29 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/?p=371This week’s video takes us to Mesa Verde National Park and Dinosaur National Monument!

This graphic (and a lot of this explanation) is credited to the NPS at this website, but we wanted to put an explanation on our blog since I explained it so poorly in the video! Essentially, multiple layers of harder rock and porous sandstone were deposited on a salt bed. The salt bed bulged in different places because of tectonic plate shifts, making the rock curve upwards and crack in parallel lines. Then, wind and water erosion (water + sandstone = calcite,) wore away at the layers. The ‘fins’ are generally the first part of forming an arch, but we saw some ‘arches’ that just looked like shallow caves hacked into the side of a HUGE rock. To make matters even more confusing, the right amount of rain is needed for this process, otherwise the rocks would a) never erode or b) erode too fast and collapse before the arch is formed. See why I had trouble explaining it on the spot in the video?

There are over 2,000 arches in the park but occasionally one collapses- at least 42 collapses have been recorded including this one in 2008.

]]>https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/22/arches-national-park-im-not-a-geologist-but/feed/0thegreatamericanparkstripTwo Thirds of a Park is Better than One: Canyonlandshttps://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/15/two-thirds-of-a-park-is-better-than-one-canyonlands/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/15/two-thirds-of-a-park-is-better-than-one-canyonlands/#commentsMon, 15 Sep 2014 16:40:15 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/?p=362We’re still in Utah with this weeks video, and visiting two of the districts at Canyonlands! Hope you’re up for ladders, landscapes, and the most photographed arch in the park!

]]>https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/15/two-thirds-of-a-park-is-better-than-one-canyonlands/feed/2thegreatamericanparkstripA Reef That Doesn’t Require Snorkeling!https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/09/a-reef-that-doesnt-require-snorkeling/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/09/a-reef-that-doesnt-require-snorkeling/#commentsTue, 09 Sep 2014 01:58:23 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/09/09/a-reef-that-doesnt-require-snorkeling/Continue reading →]]>Some of you (mom) may have noticed that nothing was posted last Thursday. Both of us have gone back to school and this has severely disrupted our editing and posting schedule! So from now on, we hope to have new videos out each Monday. Hey, it will be a little something to liven up the beginning of the work week! Without further ado, Capitol Reef National Park!

There are a lot of fascinating rock formations in today’s video! The hoodoos in particular are very photogenic!

]]>https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/08/14/bryce-canyon-heaven-for-hoodoos/feed/2thegreatamericanparkstripDeath Valley Disappointmenthttps://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/08/14/death-valley-disappointment/
https://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/08/14/death-valley-disappointment/#commentsThu, 14 Aug 2014 01:41:35 +0000http://greatamericanparkstrip.com/2014/08/14/death-valley-disappointment/Continue reading →]]>Before the Bryce Canyon video comes out tomorrow, I wanted to share a little blog post- my mom always complains that there are too many videos and not enough pictures and journal-type posts, so this one’s for you, mom!

Here’s a picture of me getting excited about the Badwater-

despite the heat I was able to get excited about a lot of things in Death Valley.

Death Valley Disappointment

a blog post by DA McQuaid

One of my attributes that I’m most proud of is my ability to roll with the punches (sometimes literally, whenever I’m lucky enough to be able to train in martial arts.) This comes in handy a lot while traveling: delays, setbacks, and disappointments are almost as common as pleasant surprises on the road.

“The Racetrack” is one of the only parts of Death Valley National Park that I had heard of prior to my visit to the park. While we do research the parks before showing up at their gates, normally it’s a quick overview and “okay, we’ll need three days to cover the main sights at this park.” The Racetrack is a mysterious site where rocks scoot along the desert floor, leaving trails. They don’t just magically move by themselves at 50mph while you’re watching, of course, but the trails show that they definitely travel without human or animal interference (though they do sometimes get stolen. Do thieves think the rocks will scoot around their backyards?) The interesting thing is that nobody knows exactly why they move. One of many theories is that small amounts of condensation form thin layers of ice on the bottoms of the rocks, allowing them to slide when the wind blows. The rocks are monitored by GPS but because it’s in a National Park, people who study the rocks can’t set up cameras for extended amounts of time. Of course, when I read about this I was interested in seeing it. We also read that the road to get there was unpaved, but a friend managed to get to the Racetrack in her Prius with regular tires, so we weren’t too worried about our Escape, with its high clearance and four-wheel drive.

Unfortunately, despite our excitement about the Racetrack, when we talked to a park ranger we realized the journey would be longer and more dangerous than expected. The road was much rougher than we had envisioned it, and the ranger showed us a picture of a Jeep tire that had blown apart completely. The issue with the road to the Racetrack isn’t that you need a four-wheel drive or high clearance vehicle, but that the rocks along the road are sharp and will stab the sidewalls of the tires, so regular passenger-grade tires don’t cut it. The park newsletter specifically says, “If you plan on going off the paved roads, plan on changing a tire at least once.” Furthermore, one of the rangers told us a horror story about a brand-new F-150 pickup (that came from the dealership with passenger-grade tires instead of truck-grade heavy-duty tires) that had been taken out on the road to the Racetrack and gotten not one, not two, but three flat tires. Luckily it was traveling with other luckier (or hardier) cars that had spares, but we didn’t relish the idea of going on a road that had decimated a brand new pickup truck’s tires that badly. The final nail in the coffin was when we read that it would take at least two and a half hours to get out to the Racetrack. Dedicate five hours of the day and severely risk having to change a tire and turn back in 103 degree heat with no chance of towing or AAA assistance (since there was no cell phone service)? I don’t think so.

Was I disappointed? Yeah. Aside from Scotty’s Castle and the Badwater Basin, the Racetrack was the thing in Death Valley I was most excited about seeing. But as we were driving out of the park, I realized that even if we had taken the drive, the chances were split between actually seeing the rocks and their mysterious trails and having to change a tire in the sweltering heat and then limp out of the park on our spare to a mechanic at least 45 minutes outside of the park.

So next time I’m near Death Valley, I’ll go with someone over 25 and get them to rent a Jeep. There’s an outfitter that’s closer to the park than any towing or repair service. But until then, I’ll just read about the mysterious rocks making their way across the desert, and be vaguely jealous that they don’t have to worry about breaking down or changing tires. Hats off to Mary for doing it fearlessly in her Prius, but at the end of the day, I’m okay with the fact that we missed out on this one.